


a snow day

by spacebutterfly



Category: Inazuma Eleven GO
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebutterfly/pseuds/spacebutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tenma and Taiyou enjoy a day in the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a snow day

Taiyou sits up in bed blearily. His head is pounding, and he has a feeling that he just woke from a bad dream – thankfully, one which he can’t remember the details of. He peers at the curtained window. A dull kind of light trickles through. It won’t be a sunny day.

A cheery jingle erupts out of the phone on Taiyou’s bedside table, making him jump. He picks it up irritably, ready to switch off that awful alarm.

But it isn’t an alarm at all. It’s a call.

“Tenma?” Taiyou murmurs, his irritation evaporating. He picks up to hear the Raimon captain himself jabbering away.

“Taiyou, Taiyou, look out the window!” he’s saying, completely obvious to Taiyou’s muddled confusion.

“What are you talking about, Tenma?” he yawns, slowly sliding out of bed and reaching for the curtain. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“N-No, nothing happened, I mean…”

“Ah!” Taiyou’s face lights up as he stares out of the window with the curtains pulled back. It’s still early, and the street outside is paved with a soft, grey light, almost as pretty as if it were a sunny spring morning – but more importantly, thick, fluffy snowflakes are floating their way to the ground. “It’s snowing!”

“I know!” Tenma says excitedly. “I called everyone on the team to let them know!”

“They must have enjoyed that,” Taiyou smirks, imagining that not quite everybody would be as happy as himself to be woken up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. “I didn’t know you liked snow so much, Tenma.”

Tenma laughs sheepishly. There’s a pause, and Taiyou can tell that his friend is about to ask something. “Um…”

“What is it?”

“Well…do you want to come to the riverbank with us? I mean, me and Shinsuke and Aoi…I think that’d be fun!”

Taiyou chuckles at his friend’s enthusiasm. “I don’t think enough snow has settled to play in it yet. Or do you want to play soccer in this weather?”

“Oh,” Tenma starts, as if he hadn’t quite thought about any of that. “Well, I’m not sure, but it’ll all work out somehow, right?!”

“Right! But I’m sorry, I can’t join you all. I have a doctor’s appointment this morning…in fact, I’d better get ready to leave soon, before the weather gets any worse. It’d be terrible if I couldn’t make it.”

“Oh, right…” Taiyou can hear the poorly-masked disappointment in his friend’s voice. “That’s okay…there’s always next time, right?”

“Of course. Bye-bye for now, Tenma.”

“Bye, Taiyou!!”

Taiyou sets down his phone with a sigh. He’d like to go, of course, but regular check-ups at the hospital always seem to be getting in the way of him spending time with his friends. What can he do? If he doesn’t take his health seriously, he might never be able to play soccer again…and the idea of that is just…

He shakes his head forcefully. Those kind of thoughts are what bad dreams are made of.

***

Taiyou rubs his arm. He’s more than used to having his blood taken by now, of course, but it still stings every time. Pulling on his thick coat and scarf, he peers out of the window again: but this time, a window at the hospital reception.

He thinks back on his conversation with the doctor. He hadn’t been told anything he didn’t already know: just ‘eat and drink properly’, ‘don’t over exert yourself’, ‘keep taking your medication’, and ‘keep yourself warm’.

“I want to make a snowman,” he mutters, watching the snow pile up on the window sill as he buttons up his coat. The ground outside even has a thin layer of white now – Taiyou hadn’t expected it to settle as well as it had. He opens the door and feels a cold blast of air in his face as he heads down the path to the street. It’s not bad. Refreshing, maybe. At least he can enjoy walking home in it.

“Taiyou!” calls a voice from the end of the street. He turns around, squinting through the flurry of flakes. A red-faced Tenma is running towards him.

“Tenma,” Taiyou smiles, taking in his friend’s worn appearance. “That was good timing. I just finished.”

“R-Really?” pants Tenma. “It was lucky I saw you!”

“It was. Are you finished for today too?”

“No! Aoi wanted something warm to drink, so we were going to the store, but then I saw you, and, well…”

“Something warm? I wouldn’t mind that either,” says Taiyou thoughtfully. “Mind if I come along?”

“Is that okay?!” says Tenma excitedly, in a tone that really means ‘yes, of course’. “We’re going back to the riverbank afterwards, but maybe it’s too snowy to play soccer now…” he says, and the two of them begin to walk back down the street.

“The snow is really piling up, isn’t it?” says Taiyou cheerfully. “Maybe we could make a snowman.”

“You want to? That’s a good idea!” Tenma beams. “We can make a soccer playing snowman!”

“Of course. For us, what else would it be?”

They laugh, and their breath mingles in frosty puffs.

***

Taiyou hasn’t made a snowman for a long time - perhaps mainly because the snow rarely settles so thickly in an urban area like this, and even when it does, he’s lucky if he’s not lying in a hospital bed at the time. Life has a funny way of working against him like that.

He watches contentedly as Tenma bounces around collecting snow, forming it into a round body. Taiyou follows suit, even if his gloved hands burn from the cold.

“Let’s make it a big one, Tenma.”

“Yeah!”

“What can we use for the face?” asks Aoi, looking all around them. “I don’t see much we can use. Everything is buried under snow…”

Shinsuke claps his hands together excitedly. “We can use your drinks cup for the nose, Aoi!”

“That’s not what I had in mind…”

As the two friends bicker, Taiyou starts to pile snow onto the second part of the snowman’s body. “Maybe we should give him some clothes, too.”

“You’re right!” says Tenma. “But what?” Taiyou pauses in thought, then goes to unbutton his coat.

“He can have mine-”

“W-wait, don’t do that!” says Tenma quickly, grabbing his friend’s arm suddenly enough to make the other two look round. “You’ll catch cold! The doctor would be really mad at you then…” Taiyou just laughs.

“You’re right, Tenma. I should be more responsible.” He smiles sheepishly. “But I really thought he’d look good in my coat.”  
  
Tenma frowns. “Well, yeah, but…”

“He doesn’t even have a face yet…” says Shinsuke reasonably.

“Tenma, Taiyou-kun, why don’t you two go back to the clubroom and find one of the spare uniforms? It’s a soccer-playing snowman, isn’t it?”

“That’s it! That’s perfect!” Tenma grins, practically jumping. “We can get a soccer ball for him too!”

Aoi nods. “Just leave the head to us.”

“Raimon soccer club, huh?” Taiyou murmurs, following the excitable Tenma at a leisurely place. “That’s quite nostalgic…”

***

“It doesn’t feel like so long ago that I wore this uniform,” Taiyou smiles, holding up one of the spare shirts. “But at the same time, it was a long journey we had, wasn’t it?”

Tenma nods, then chuckles nervously. “It sounds strange, but sometimes I almost forget some things that happened back then. The details are fuzzy…”

“A side-effect of time-travel, maybe,” says Taiyou quietly. “It happens to me, too. It’s odd, isn’t it?” Tenma doesn’t say anything in reply, but he looks a little sad. Taiyou picks up another uniform. “Tenma, why don’t we use a keeper’s uniform? We can use the gloves too.”

“Good idea!” says Tenma, all gloominess forgotten in an instant.

“There’s  _snow_ getting past this keeper, that’s for sure,” Taiyou winks.

Tenma is laughing all the way back to the riverbank.

***

It’s one of the most lop-sided snowmen that Taiyou has ever seen, but perhaps it’s more charming that way. It’s got ‘Raimon spirit’. (It’s got Shinsuke’s headband, too.) Once Shinsuke has jumped up and rammed the cardboard cup nose in as a finishing touch, they all crowd round it and Aoi takes a picture.

“That was fun,” says Taiyou as they all step back to admire their handiwork again. He rests his gaze on Tenma, who couldn’t look any more delighted if he tried.

“This is the snowman we made together,” he says, balling his fists with enthusiasm. “This is the snowman we built with our love for soccer!”

Taiyou nods. “Let’s always play soccer together, Tenma. Let’s keep on making memories like this.”

That’s all he can ask for – because it was Tenma who helped him get back on his feet, who let him play free soccer, and who he fought alongside to protect it. That’s why Tenma is so important to him.

In fact, even if they hadn’t done a thing today, if they hadn’t made a snowman, Taiyou would still have valued the time spent with him just as dearly.

“Taiyou…” Tenma says, with a look of understanding. “I know that even if we’re ever apart, with soccer we’ll be connected!”

“Tenma…”

“Hey,” says Shinsuke loudly, “We’re here too, you know!”

**Author's Note:**

> This was a secret santa gift for someone back in 2013!


End file.
